Category: media

“The last broadcast of this New York-based program, which many listeners tuned into at npr.org rather than over the air, is expected to be on July 25. It’s an expensive failure — the first-year budget was more than $2 million — and comes at a time when NPR is facing the same financial constraints as other news media thanks to higher costs and a downturn in underwriting.”

“The potentially precedent-setting action comes after several months of investigation at the FCC over whether Comcast was blocking Internet traffic to gain a competitive advantage, or whether it had interfered with Internet traffic to maintain online speeds for millions of customers. Comcast is the nation’s second-largest residential Internet provider.”

The two sides met privately for more than five hours before the AMPTP released a statement saying the guild was “unreasonably” seeking more than other unions. The session came as actors continue to work under a contract that expired last month.

“Except in the Imax format, you can’t have 3-D without digital projection, and the digital rollout in Europe has been agonizingly slow. Hollywood has proved less generous in its approach to helping exhibitors there shoulder the costs of digital installations, which average about $100,000.”

The two actors unions SAG and AFTRA don’t agree on current negotiations for a new contract with Hollywood. But “troubling still are the unions’ divergent interpretations of the past, whether it’s 60 years ago or six months ago. If the two sides cannot agree on their common history, how can they possibly forge a shared future?”

Movies with a pro-military message get help. Those that have a less flattering story line don’t…

“Negotiators for SAG and the studios planned to meet on Thursday to discuss the “final offer” management presented the union when contract talks broke off in stalemate last week, hours before SAG’s old labor agreement expired.”

“The Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama (D-Illinois) voted for the final bill, despite intense lobbying by supporters who used Obama’s own online organizing technology to try to hold him to his promise to fight any bill that included amnesty.”

“When two Italian films won the top runner-up prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the reaction at home was akin to that usually reserved for victorious national soccer teams… Many critics and industry experts see the recent recognition at Cannes as a positive sign that after a protracted dark age, periodically brightened by hits that turned out to be flashes in the pan, Italian cinema is finally back on track.”

“In a frenzy, fans have bought so many late-night tickets for the July 18 opening of the next Batman movie that theaters in places like San Diego, Chicago, and even Eagan, Minn., are scheduling 6 a.m. screenings for those who can’t get in at midnight or 3 in the morning.”